


mouth full of white lies

by ravensarefree



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alter Egos, Character Study, Con Artists, Peter Nureyev - Freeform, Thievery, With all the charming pickpockets in fandoms, is this really the first work in the thievery tag, my god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 13:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12433746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensarefree/pseuds/ravensarefree
Summary: Peter Nureyev has been many people in the past. Some he's liked more than others.





	mouth full of white lies

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my contribution to the Penumbra fandom guys! *fist pump*! And I wrote this instead of doing math homework so please don't judge.  
> Title from "Ghost" by Halsey  
> Also, yeah, I come back after like 4 moths and i write 450 words of Penumbra. I'M SORRY FRENS.

Majesty Mourn. A pageant winning smile and a pair of wedges the color of blood. Peter Nureyev had worn many colors, many shields, many faces in his time, but this was perhaps the one he liked the least. Majesty was obnoxious, brash, the color of gum stuck to a desk that's been there for who knows how long. Majesty Mourn was a middle aged suburb, ripe with secrets that would be taken to the grave. It was uncomfortable, like putting on a coat that was two sizes too small, but had once been much loved.  
Because that was the truth. There was a time when Peter Nureyev had loved playing Majesty. Loved fooling the suburban boys, barely out of college, following in their father's footsteps as carpenters, teachers, adulterers. Loved leading on the naive mothers, the one's who always told themselves that they were not the reason. loved making them all feel something. That is, until she left.  


* * *

Kieran Fayr. Fishnets and a look on their face like they wanted to know what you moaned like. Peter Nureyev didn't hate this one, actually. There was a charm to it, a sense of we-both-know-everyone's-watching-so-let's-put-on-a-show. It was always a relief to be able to play a character with morals. The one's without always left him with a sense of gut-rotting- guilt.  
Kieran Fayr took people home, yes, that much is true, but they also buried dead baby crows and helped lost children find their mothers in supermarkets. Kieran Fayr was kind for no reason other than they could afford to be, and Peter Nureyev both loved and hated the idea that a farce of himself could be a better person than he ever would be.  


* * *

Xavier O' Brien. A wide open smile and muddy hiking boots. Peter Nureyev loved him. Xavier O' Brien was a wanderer, finding all the forgotten valleys of Mars, the deadliest rushing streams on earth, the strangest, most vicious creature on the Outer Rim. He loved them all, and they accepted him as one of their own. The planets, the animals, the plants would recognize something in Peter when he was Xavier, something so much gentler and yet so much wilder than everything he was usually allowed to be.  
Xavier O' Brien was part fae, part something wild, part something untameable. He was an empty knapsack, because he knew how to find food, how to find shelter, how to build a home in the middle of nowhere. Xavier O' Brien was not a version of Peter Nureyev that had ever existed, but perhaps in another universe, in another timeline, in another life, Xavier O' Brien was the Peter Nureyev that existed. The Peter Nureyev that was content. The Peter Nureyev that was happy.


End file.
